Hourglass - Aesthetic (February 11, 2013)

I thought some more about the hourglass idea. For the aesthetic, I want to pair the ugly, junkyard scrap visuals with rich and bass-y sounds. I think that the act of watching time pass by is an ugly act (or I do not really like doing it), so I like the idea of pairing that with staring at junkyard items. I want to contrast that though, with pleasant, full sounds. The following images are just thought blurbs that I wrote out while thinking about the idea

Hourglass - Mounting ideas (February 11, 2013)

I think that at the most basic level, I would have something attached to the wall, a thing that rotates (half a circle of rotation) attached to that base, and something that connects the jugs to the rotating piece. I could connect the jugs through the base of the jug or from the necks. I want most of the sides of the jugs to not touch anything to preserve the natural resonant sound. Here are some sketches of ideas for mounting.

Hourglass - Preliminary list of supplies needed (February 11, 2013)

2 water jugs

something to drill a hole in each

rice

I think it would be great if I could find a bunch of old looking jewelry to fit the aesthetic more

2 microphones

2 microphone covers/protectors

what should this be made of?

2 speakers

something to attach the jugs together

(tape? a container? -- talk to Sasha about this)

something to put in between the jugs to let the rice fall betwen the two jugs)

cloth?

2 funnels?

mounting materials (see sketches)

junkyard scraps to fit the visual aesthetic

something that only turns 180 degrees

need help with this

The following is the list that I originally wrote up on paper when I did not have internet:

Hourglass - updated idea and todo (February 11, 2013)

Current top three ideas (January 30, 2013)

Electromagnetic string vibration with ferrofluid

I do not have a drawing of this, but I thought it would be interesting to place some string in ferrofluid and electromagnetically vibrate it. I would have to first figure out if it actually works and what kind of sounds come out of it. I like the pairing of the natural visuals that emerge from the ferrofluid coupled with whatever sound may come out. I do not have much experience with magnets, so it would be fun to learn more through this project.

Hourglass 1

Attach contact microphones to the ends of the hourglass. As the sand falls, the resonance of the chambers should change, so this would be kind of like amplifying the sounds of the sands falling in the hourglass and listening to how the resonance changes. The sounds would go out through speakers.

Hourglass 2

This is a modified version of the original hourglass idea. The concept is the same, but we add shakers onto some part of the hourglass to get feedback. I like the concept of this idea (involving the hourglass) because it forces the viewer to stare at time passing by. I think that this would be a fun thing to make and I would enjoy spending the time to tune the feedback.

Reverberant Plate

Gourd

Binaural

I want to make binaural microphones each of which would be attached to the outside of some headphones (or sound cancelling head gear stuff). Then we would switch the output between the left and right ears to give the listener a strange experience. This would violate their expectations of resonance and room reverberation. I think that this would fit the space because there are bound to be a lot of sounds in the installation space and that is the kind of environment where this idea would do best. I talked to Jonathan about this idea as well and how I could offer a switch or slider to change the experience (one side is normal -- left mapped to left and right mapped to right, and the other side is the switched experience).

I would be interested in adding feedback to the sound as well. I'm not sure how I would accomplish this since the microphones are on the outside of the headphones. I'll have to think about this part a bit more.